Linux on Sony Vaios


Foreword:  Sony is not an OSS friendly company, and they certainly do not make Linux friendly laptops.  If you are like me, and already have a Sony laptop, there's not much you can do about it now, but if you're considering buying a Sony to use Linux on, consider buying something else!

Hotkeys, Backlight Dimmer

Gnome has had some regression in it's gnome-power-manager package, and the current version does not work well with Vaio laptops.  I'm hosting the 2.24 version [here].  If you install this old version, be sure to lock it in Synaptic so that updates don't roll over it.  This package, coupled with Ubuntu 9.04 have made all my hotkeys and dimmer controls work perfectly, better in fact than it seems to with Vista and XP.

Headphone jack insertion not turning off external speakers

By default, ALSA doesn't seem to jive with the audio chipset in VAIO laptops.  To make your speakers turn off when you insert headphones, simply create a file called /etc/modprobe.d/alsa that contains the following line:
options snd-hda-intel model=sony-assamd